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Neighbors - Back to the Einstein's RiddlesIt is said that this quiz was made up by Albert Einstein and according to him 98% will not solve it.There is a row of five houses, each having a different color. In these houses live five people of various nationalities. Each of them nurtures a different beast, likes different drinks and smokes different brand of cigars.

1. The Brit lives in the Red house. 2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets. 3. The Dane drinks tea. 4. The Green house is on the left of the White house. 5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee. 6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds. 7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill. 8. The man living in the center house drinks milk. 9. The Norwegian lives in the first house. 10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats. 11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill. 12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer. 13. The German smokes Prince. 14. The Norwegian lives next to the Blue house. 15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

Which of the five house owners keeps fish as a pet? (are you one of the 2%).

This old topic is locked since it was answered many times. You can check solution in the Spoiler below.Pls visit New Puzzles section to see always fresh brain teasers.

More then 2% get that answer, but Einstein said the true answer is is impossible to get with the given information. While it is true that the German pet is unknown after deducing everything else you are never told that the fifth pet is indeed a fish, you assume it is because you are told that is what your looking for. Only 2% understood that looking for the fish doesn't make the unknown pet a fish.

I sat here with a peice of paper for maybe 2 minutes, building a little chart like you just showed. Then after I read the entire thing and noticed it says nothing about a fish in the 15 statements and the question at the end does not ask who the possible owner of fish is. or which man keeps fish as pets. It asks "who has fish at home?" Fish can also be food. It is just as logical for me to assume the said fish at home are food as they are the long lost pet.

I probably could have figured out who the unknown was but I quickly came to realize I could never know for sure. My chart was looking much like yours.

I am pretty proud over this one. I had a math teacher way early on, maybe elementary level that would throw in unanswerable questions. The only correct answer was there is not enough information given.

Zebra puzzle:
"There are five houses.
The Englishman lives in the red house.
The Spaniard owns the dog.
Coffee is drunk in the green house.
The Ukrainian drinks tea.
The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house.
The Old Gold smoker owns snails.
Kools are smoked in the yellow house.
Milk is drunk in the middle house.
The Norwegian lives in the first house.
The man who smokes Chesterfields lives in the house next to the man with the fox.
Kools are smoked in the house next to the house where the horse is kept.
The Lucky Strike smoker drinks orange juice.
The Japanese smokes Parliaments.
The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.

Now, who drinks water? Who owns the zebra?

In the interest of clarity, it must be added that each of the five houses is painted a different color, and their inhabitants are of different national extractions, own different pets, drink different beverages and smoke different brands of American cigarettes. One other thing: In statement 6, right means your right."

I get the same unanswerable loop with this version of the story.

They can all five drink water and any one of them could own the zebra (it isn't stated that every man has only one pet. In fact the one man has more than one snail, therefore they are able to have two pets or more)

There are so many ways this question, in all it's variations, just doesn't work. It is a bogus question, desgined to make math nerds bust out scratch paper and a pencil and spead time working out the placement of the unknown variables. When all you have to do is read it. It was meant as a joke I think.

The term "wild goose chase" comes to mind. Kinda like this is a joke telling you hey go catch me a wild goose. Then setting you loose in a room filled with geese that were raised on a farm for 20 generations.

I am not poking at your english, you obviously are fluent. You probably speak with better grammar than most people that speak english as a first langauge.

After trying this on paper, and then deciding I could not possibly answer the question. I could only answer which man has an unknown pet. I looked at various versions of this riddle in hopes of finding out if my answer was correct. I saw the question asked in about five different ways.

I also saw mention of the question being unanswerable as stated. The only way the actual question can be answered is for assumptions to be made. First off you have to assume the fish is alive. You have to assume the fish is a pet, you have to assume the unknown beast (from the deduction) is the fish.

If you look at the Zebra puzzle on wikipedia, you see that you are told (in the discussion section) you must assume the question means to say something other than actually stated to be able to answer the actual question. To be able to justify working the problem out.

I have no doubt that given these clues you can figure out which man has an unknown animal under his roof. But to assume it is fish is incorrect. Unless the question is worded differently. The correct way to word the question would be something like "Which of the five house owners keeps fish as a pet."

It needs to mention one of the five men somehow, by saying house owner or which house or what color house... It needs to clarify. It must also state in the question the fish are pets and not food.

By simply asking who owns the fish, I could answer in a million ways and never be proved wrong or right. Anyone on the planet could have the fish. The guy in the sixth house could. Maybe the five on the start of the street all have fish in the freezer. It could be a fishing town for all I know.

Again I am not poking at your english. I am just fairly certain this question was meant to be a joke for students. I would say I am 98% sure...

Another way for me to be able to accept the answer is how a person words their answer. Now if someone said "the man with the unknown pet probably keeps fish at home." I could see that as being a fair answer.

But alas the question isn't asking who the probable person is. It doesn't ask for a percentage type of answer it asks for a definant answer. I know that showing a little chart and replacing the word unknown with fish is not a correct answer.

The animal "fish" is also key in this question. As it is both plural and singular, and it could be seen as food.

In the zebra version the same plural/sigular issue comes up. "I could say the zebra of africa are owned by no man." The zebra can mean all the zebras in africa. Not a single zebra on this one street with the five houses.

I hope I made sense with this.

Last but not least, having an animal living with you doesn't make it your pet. Working animals are not considered pets. This question is butchered and makes you assume too much for there to be a correct answer.

Basicly for the question to be answerable you would have to do a lot of rewording from the original.

I've done a lot of these matrix problems (I call them that because it's easiest to solve them using a matrix setup) in the past. If you're not given enough information, they don't have answers, and this one doesn't have an answer because the last pet doesn't have to be a fish. It could be anything that isn't a dog, bird, cat, or horse. Using an unknown for the pet, you do get the same answer as you posted, but you can't assume that the unknown is fish just because the question is asking for someone who owns fish.

The fact that the fish is not diretcly linked to the statements does NOT have anything to do with it.First of all, it was never said there are only five houses, or that every person owned only one pet, drank only one drink, and so on. It was'nt even said the poeple lived in one street.(given the diverse nationalities, they didn't)

A bigger problem in the question is this: one person is said to live in the FIRST house, while an other lives LEFT of something.there are four different solutions to this:[list][*]the first house is on the left side of a street and the house is directly left of another.[/*:m:2d4b9][*]the first house is on the right side of a street and the houses are directly left of eachother.[/*:m:2d4b9][*]the first house is on the left side of a street and the hous is left of another with some distance.[/*:m:2d4b9][*]the first house is on the right side of a street and the hous is left of another with some distance.[/*:m:2d4b9][list]this is obviously assuming the houses don't form a circle;)

And also, only 2% of the people got it right then because most people didn't do logic, didn't learn lineair programming and didn't have computers. They do now.